What Do Local Elections Mean For The Parties Nationally?

As the dust settles on local elections across the UK, the inevitable question on everyone’s lips is what it all means when it comes to the General Election in two years’ time.

To assist with this, the polling guru, Professor Sir John Curtice has produced for the BBC his projected national share of the vote – in essence what the local election results would mean if they were replicated across the country at a General Election.

The results, with how they differ from the 2019 election results in brackets, are as follows:

Labour: 35% (up 3 points)

Conservative: 30% (down 14 points)

Liberal Democrats: 19% (up 8 points)

The headlines from Professor Curtice for each party are as follows:

The Conservatives are “now electorally weaker than at any point since Boris Johnson won his majority of 80 in 2019.”

For Labour he cautions that its projected vote share is “no better than what the party achieved in 2018 when Jeremy Corbyn was still party lead.”

Turning his attention to the Liberal Democrats meanwhile, Professor Curtice notes: “the result represents its best performance in local elections since it entered into coalition with the Conservatives after the 2010 general election.”

Over at Sky News meanwhile, its projection is expressed in how many MPs would be elected for each party if the local election results were replicated nationwide. It suggests it would see:

Conservatives: 278 seats (down 87 since 2019)

Labour: 271 seats (up 68 since 2019)

SNP: 50 seats (up 2 since 2019)

Liberal Democrats: 28 seats (up 17 since 2019)

Under such a scenario, in what would be a hung Parliament it is likely that Keir Starmer would find himself as Prime Minister with the support of the Liberal Democrats and SNP.

Meanwhile, with voters preparing to elect a new MP in Wakefield following the resignation of the Conservative Imran Ahmad Khan after being convicted for sexual assault, Labour will be cheered by the local elections results.

The cumulative results from the elections in the council wards making up the Wakefield parliamentary seat (Horbury and South Ossett, Ossett, Wakefield East, Wakefield North, Wakefield Rural, and Wakefield West) put as the share of the vote for Labour and the Conservatives were as follows:

Labour: 50.6%

Conservatives: 33.6%

Such statistics will be causing jitters among Conservatives in the red wall seats.

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